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A few hours after dawn, Bill Sheehan and a group of binocular-toting bird watchers ambled down the dirt road toward Caribou’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Sheehan, a birding guide and the founder of Aroostook Birders, called out the birdsongs radiating out of the trees around them.
“That was a chestnut-sided warbler,” he said, pointing to a branch. On the other side of the road, a common yellowthroat.
“These are the birds that sing, ‘wichity, wichity, wichity,’” Sheehan announced to the crowd.
On the final Wednesday of the month, around 30 people came out to birdwatch with Sheehan for the fourth outing of “May is Healthy You Caribou,” an annual series organized by the Caribou Parks and Recreation Department.
This May was likely the most successful month in the program’s 14 years, organizers said. Dozens have attended each outing. The trend matches a growing interest in birding worldwide, driven by the popularity of the apps eBird and Merlin — which allow users to log and identify birds — and a surge in the hobby in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 96 million Americans participated in bird watching in 2022, according to a 2024 report by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. That’s more than double the number the federal agency reported a decade earlier, and accounts for close to a third of the country’s population.
“It can be a very private thing. It can be a public group thing. It doesn’t take a lot of money to get into it,” Sheehan said. “You don’t need a $500 Callaway driver or a boat.”
In Caribou, many birders had their phones out, recording the chirps and warbles and trills emanating from the greenery along the Aroostook River. But all were still tuned into Sheehan as he scanned the trees.
“Bill is the original Merlin,” Tamia Glidden of Presque Isle said.
Glidden, who bird watches as a hobby, said she tries to make at least one of the outings each year.
“I’ve never been with this big of a group,” Glidden said. “This is really fun. It’s just beautiful out here at this time of year, as long as you’ve got bug spray on.”
Gina Freme of Caribou has also attended the series for years. She won the raffle for a new pair of binoculars Wednesday, a yearly prize every attending birder is entered to win.
“Every time I come, I learn something,” Freme said.
The raffle, and the event as a whole, is largely underwritten by Cary Medical Center. The city-owned hospital has been a partner in the series since its inception, when staff schemed with the Parks and Recreation Department for ways to get the community active in the spring.
“It’s something for anybody of all ages,” Cary Community Relations Coordinator Karlee Willett said. “It’s really not a discriminatory activity.”
Kids as young as 10 years old and adults nearing 80 walked side by side down the road, stopping for an eastern kingbird, or a yellow warbler building a nest.
The birding was “so good” that the group, as usual, barely made it a quarter mile down the road, and didn’t quite reach the ponds teeming with waterfowl at the end of it.
“Next year, I promise … we’ll start out by the ponds and work our way this way,” Sheehan said.